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1. Johnny Tuttle Posted: April 13, 2007 at 10:27 PM (#2334359)America's population % that is black is somewhere around 16%. 9% of MLB players, when people from Asia, Canada, and Latin America join in the fun, doesn't bother me. 1.5% of the dentists? That bothers me.
I'd be willing to bet that the people most bothered by this are the bigots who think blacks are inherently more athletic (therefore there must be systemic oppression to explain why MLB isn't 90% black) or the fools who think America is 50% white, 50% black, and 0% Latino. </rant>
I agree. Institutional racism is alive and well and the US, and its evil works to exclude and underrepresent African-Americans in residential patterns, educational opportunity and attainment, and across a variety of professions. That is a national scandal that should disgust everyone.
That the proportion of African-American players in MLB is lower than it was a generation or two ago shouldn't be anything close to an issue of similar concern.
[/sarcasm]
The draft process and the ability of well funded clubs with deep development systems in places like the Dominican Republic will be able to gain talent for pennies on the dollar by comparison to the gamble that might come from signing risky talent out of high school or early in college.
The 400th best NBA prospect might have a hard time making a roster even in the CBA or overseas and the 400th best NFL prospect, if hes lucky, gets a training camp invite and then heads to the Arena league. And these guys get 0 dollars of signing bonuses and no garunteed employment
It's just a "jeez, it's a shame black people have next to zero intrest in baseball" thing.
Incidentally, the economics argument is obviously true as far as teams have much more of an incentive to invest in foreign countries than in U.S. players. But the claim that expensive equipment prices American blacks out of the market is belied by, well, the fact that there are plenty of players from the Caribbean who were able to develop into major leaguers without spending thousands, or even hundreds, of dollars on equipment.
MM1f: your comparison is at the wrong point. Out of college, you'd much rather be the 400th best baseball prospect than the 400th best football or basketball prospect. But few players are making a decision out of college which to choose. Out of high school, the comparison is more even. The 400th best major league prospect gets 5 figures and the chance to play some games in obscurity as a nobody in lower Podunk. The 400th best basketball prospect gets a full scholarship to play DI basketball, which is going to be worth more than that, a chance to play on national television and become a household name for a few years, and a chance to move up in the draft rankings.
This is not really true. The total number of players who start for (let's say) NCAA tournament teams is 325. If you're the 400th best prospect in a class you aren't cracking that.
If you're the 400th best baseball prospect, you can get a scholarship to play DI baseball, which is the free education if not the TV exposure (which nowhere close to 400 people get.) It's just that many such prospects don't take this.
400th best football out of HS is probably best of all, as there are trillions of football scholarships and because the rosters are so large, if you improve you have a chance to star.
I'm not really sure international talent really is gained at "pennies on the dollar". There are not publicly known international signing budgets that can be compared to the signing bonuses of draft picks, but I've tried to look into it a bit and it wouldn't surprise me if the split between domestic and international spending is not in balance, ie if the talent ratio is 70/30 for domestic players than the budgets are probably in that ballpark.
Individual players have much less bargaining power and perhaps as a result sign for less than their intrinsic worth, but these kids are also younger and risker so at a group level it balances out.
Here's what blew me away... the #1 participation sports in America? Bowling. Heaven help us as a nation.
I don't know if it's a shame, but it may create some segregation among sports fans, and it may be that there are blacks who could play baseball well but aren't getting into it in part becuase of sociocultural influences, which could hurt them and take away possible talent from MLB. Choices are made in the context of environments.
Is it a "shame" that more white people don't play basketball?
Not the same thing. But, actually, I think a lot of white basketball fans probably think it is.
Organized baseball may be going strong, but at the LL level, kids aren't playing pick-up ball like they did 40 years ago. This has to lead to a decline in proficiency, which opens the door to the international players who come from backgrounds where kids play baseball as much or more than we used to.
This is probably true. There is much more indoor, sedentary entertainment available to kids today than in the 1970s when I was growing up and played some type of sport daily. I have said before that I think in a few years we will be reading articles about how there are fewer Americans, period, playing MLB.
Can you? From the article:
But baseball is not considered a revenue sport in college, as football and basketball are. Full scholarships are very rare for baseball. More often two or three players will share a scholarship.
As for sharing scholarships, I would guess that this is pretty common for football programs that aren't big moneymakers since the rosters are so big.
Now, obviously, I don't really know the ins and outs of how student athletes are recruited and offered scholarships - just what I've picked up anecdotally here and there. Feel free to chime in with some expertise - coming from a university system where there no athletic scholarships across the board, I find the topic very interesting.
And I've responded before that there's no evidence to support the claim. How do you know how many kids are playing pick-up ball? There are statistics on Little League, but not on unorganized activities. It may be true, but the fact that lots of people say that it's true -- and they've been saying it for at least two decades that I can remember -- doesn't mean it is.
I'll answer the opposite: I know kids aren't playing pick up *at all* in my town, because when I go fishing down at the pond at our town recreational facility, kids aren't using the field to play baseball unless they're in uniform and adults are present. When I drive through other towns, the ballfields I pass are empty. So if the question is "how many kids are not playing pick up baseball", the answer would be almost all of them.
When I was a kid, the ballfields near where I lived were always in use. Sometimes we couldn't get a field to play on because they were all taken. It's very different now.
Where do you see them playing unorganized ball? 9 to 14 year olds, I mean.
The research dealt with pick-up ball? We played every day during a 4 to five month period every year, back in the late 60's early 70's. LL schedules about 20 games each spring. There's a big difference.
Hey, baseball is my favorite sport, but bowling is the one sport that I can actually impress people with. :-)
Weeds on baseball fields as a cause of the 92 LA race riots? Come on.
Me too, at the same time, with absolutely no adult supervision, ever.
Today I live in the same city in which I grew up, and I never, ever see kids playing pickup baseball, ever. At least as far as Santa Clara, California, goes, pickup baseball is a cultural phenomenon that has completely vanished within a generation.
Meanwhile, Little League and other forms of organized, adult-managed youth baseball (Pony, Colt, etc.) are thriving here as never before.
Yes, Steve, I remember you saying this in previous discussions. Does it means more kids are playing less ball? It makes the point, regardless, that kids aren't playing baseball as much as they used to. You have to practice to get better. If kids are only playing 20 odd games a year, it seems to me that means less of them will advance beyond amateur ability.
I was speaking metaphorically.
Contrasting decades old memories with a handful of anecdotal observations does not facts make.
Decades old memories? Was it that long ago? It seems like just yesterday. Anyway...I'm comfortable agreeing to disagree with you on this one.
Certainly true, but neither does it necessarily make for falsehood, either.
There is utterly no reason to have any doubt of the notion that U.S. kids today engage in far less unsupervised, unstructured outdoor play than did U.S. kids of earlier generations. If you dispute this, I'll be convinced that your powers of cultural observation, whether through personal viewing or scanning of the literature on the subject, are nonexistent.
Given this larger cultural dynamic, the incidence of pickup baseball as one particular manifestation hardly seems implausible in the least. And, seriously, do you observe kids playing pickup baseball where you live?
Does anyone?
But this statement doesn't really address the question of whether kids are playing more or less <u>baseball</u> today than they did way back when. In fact, you yourself, even say why: "Meanwhile, Little League and other forms of organized, adult-managed youth baseball (Pony, Colt, etc.) are thriving here as never before."
I think the cultural shift among children is toward more organized and adult-supervised activity in general. But I don't think that's unique to baseball, and it doesn't really address the issue of whether kids are playing more or less baseball.
You have to practice to get better. If kids are only playing 20 odd games a year, it seems to me that means less of them will advance beyond amateur ability.
But couldn't one counter that more organized baseball means more instruction and more structured practice, so kids are more likely to get better as baseball players today? And, anecdotally, my impression is that organized sports in general are much more extensive, so that, if one wanted to, one could play vastly more organized baseball games than one could back when I was a kid (30 years ago) with travel teams and such.
Definitely not true in the parts of NYC and Boston/Cambridge that I've been to. Pickup ball is alive and well, and I'm grateful for that.
Well, that wasn't the point I was making. I agree that in my hometown, today far fewer kids play baseball, but those who do play it in a more serious, organized, competition-oriented form than when I was a kid. My opinion is that in terms of the production of professional-caliber baseball players, the current environment is superior. Whether that makes it a better environment for kids to experience and learn from is a different question.
I think the cultural shift among children is toward more organized and adult-supervised activity in general. But I don't think that's unique to baseball
Fully agreed.
But couldn't one counter that more organized baseball means more instruction and more structured practice, so kids are more likely to get better as baseball players today?
I would say so, yes.
And, anecdotally, my impression is that organized sports in general are much more extensive, so that, if one wanted to, one could play vastly more organized baseball games than one could back when I was a kid (30 years ago) with travel teams and such.
I agree with this too. A couple of my friends have had boys who got seriously into baseball, and the opportunities presented to them for very nearly year-round, highly competitive traveling team ball were far greater than existed a few decades ago. (These traveling team dynamics are intense, requiring an enormous family commitment of time, effort, and money.) Whether this environment is on balance a positive for anyone beyond the few elite-caliber young baseball players it produces is, I think, a very good question.
Pickupp basketball, or pickup baseball? Or both?
"Students"? Harsh. We're talking about baseball here, not lacrosse.
I used to play pickup "baseball" as a kid. We would use wiffle bats and rubber spaldeen balls. At the minimum, we needed 4 on each side (1 SS/3Bman, 1 1Bman, 2 OFers. Self-pitch). We played at least 3-4 times/week. I notice that in my childhood neighborhoods now that no one does this anymore.
For basketball, it's always been easy to find a game. The key is to find players at your level, otherwise it's too boring or futile.
For instance, I don't know about you guys, but I spend a tad bit less time hanging around playgrounds than I did when I was twelve. So I might just not quite have the same opportunity to observe the phenomenon.
And, for that matter, I really only experienced one small socioeconomic demographic growing up (and a similar one now.) I really wouldn't begin to have the foggiest idea what urban (or rural) kids were doing then, so I wouldn't even have a basis for comparison, even if I knew what they're doing now.Not that much -- but (a) see above about me not being a child molester, and (b) for whatever reason, my neighborhood's kids are almost all girls, so there's not a sample there.
And my whole point is that "hardly seems implausible" is not the same thing as "is correct." One can't prove things merely by arguing that they're plausible.
Um, a lot of us have kids, David. I'm with them at the playground every spare moment I can wring. It's not as much as when I was twelve, but I'll thank you for not implying I'm a child molester because I take my kids to the park to play as much as possible. :)
I've noticed the exact same thing as others... the numbers of kids playing informal, pickup baseball has plummeted, in my own (admittedly anecdotal) experience. When I was between the ages of nine and fourteen, I played pickup soccer, touch football, baseball/softball or road hockey pretty much every single day that weather permitted and occasionally when it didn't (after 14, I had practices or games most every day and was going to school in the city). I don't ever remember the ballfield nearest my house(s) being unoccupied in summertime over the course of a whole weekend day, nor very often in the hour or so after school. You'd often have to wait for a game to break up if your group wanted to play on the soccer or baseball field.
The park I take my boys to most often backs onto three diamonds. In two years, I've seen them in use twice; once by a practice and once with a tournament. Never by a group of kids playing on their own.
Incidentally, in my anecdotal experience, when we played informally, we didn't play baseball on "diamonds" on an organized field at all; we played in a vacant lot in our neighborhood. And since our parents weren't there -- that was the point, after all -- they didn't know what we were doing. (Not firsthand anyway; it's not like we were lying about what we were doing.) So we as 12 year olds could see us, but our parents as 32 year olds could not. That's what I'm extrapolating from here for my anecdotes. If I drove around my old neighborhood now, I wouldn't see kids playing, but that doesn't mean that they're not. It means I no longer hang out where they do.
Even "when I was a boy" in the late 80s early 90s you had to wait for fields/courts. Isn't the case anymore. It's possible that there are thousands of secret fields scattered across America where little boys are playing from dusk till dawn free from our molesting eyes, but I doubt it.
the question is how many kidz contine playing baseball after age 12.
kids don't play in the street.
how many skoolz even HAVE baseball teams? and i mean middle skool and HS. not real too many.
you have to have a LOT of money you want your kid in a travel team. a LOT of money.
how many poor kids from the rural areas NOT rich burbs no matter what race play baseball?
how many kidz from a 1 parent family play baseball?
i would like to see real actual numbers here.
Much like the rest of globalized economy, we'll simply outsource baseball to other countries where the labor force has a competitive advantage at player development. Instead, the young kids here will work hard to become the future I-bankers, lawyers, and businesspeople of the world economy. I think most Americans would want it this way.
You can be at the playground with your three-year old, noticing that the nine-year olds aren't using the adjacent baseball field.
Anyway, this thread seems to be leaning toward "I remember when ..." Good stuff, to be sure, but not terribly reliable in painting an accurate historical picture.
Yes. I'm with DMN on this, though I have to say I question the front end of this anecdotal stuff more than the back end. That is, I really doubt people played nearly as much pickup baseball as you think. I hardly ever did. All the baseball I played was organized. Occasionally, I'd play "baseball" with just my younger brother, but whenever a bunch of kids got together in my 'hood, we played football, basketball, or pardon me, "Smear the Queer."
And, every Friday you can find me and my girls at a park in Rockville, MD (down the street from the shopping center with the Trader Joe's, Mama Lucia, and Panera) and there are TONS of kids playing pickup ball of all kinds: soccer, b-ball, football, and baseball. Oh, and tennis. They're all black, hispanic, asian, and eastern european.
Apparently you don't. But I raised two kids, in the same city in which I grew up, and therefore spent hours in many of the same playgrounds and city parks that I'd spent time in as a kid. And now that my kids are grown and gone, I still live here, and regularly ride my bike and walk my dog through the same places.
I really only experienced one small socioeconomic demographic growing up (and a similar one now.) I really wouldn't begin to have the foggiest idea what urban (or rural) kids were doing then, so I wouldn't even have a basis for comparison, even if I knew what they're doing now.
OK. But you do realize that there are volumes of research on the subject of changing patterns of recreation and supervision among kids in the US over the past few decades. This phenomenon isn't nearly just anecdotal.
And my whole point is that "hardly seems implausible" is not the same thing as "is correct." One can't prove things merely by arguing that they're plausible.
Well, of course not. But neither is "hardly seems implausible" the same thing as "not correct." Why not try addressing the issue on its merits.
Which is why it seems more likely to me that the problem is perception of different generations than actual change.
Or play constantly before? Some (most?) elementary schools nowadays forbid baseball during recess nowadays, for liability reasons. Organized youth leagues are fine, but they are better if you've had a half-hour of batting practice everyday after lunch :)
I am addressing the merits. The merits of the claim that "I don't see it, so it doesn't happen," which is the actual issue on the table.
If you're going to cite "plausibility" as your sole piece of evidence, then pointing out that plausibility isn't evidence is addressing the issue.
I think you're full of it on this issue. Things do change across generations; change isn't simply a phenomenon of perception and memory. And the many, clear, and manifest differences in family dynamics and child-rearing and child-supervision patterns in the US over the past few decades aren't anything close to mere "perception."
Skepticism is healthy. You aren't exhibiting healthy skepticism here; you're demonstrating willful active denial.
You should go back and get the Fall 2002 issue. It was an incredible non-look at 4 Square.
Oh, knock it off. The issue of changing childhood play/supervision patterns has been studied and published all over the place. I won't play dueling Google searches with you, but if you're inclined to actually learn about the subject, as opposed to playing "gotcha," you can find and read for yourself.
I am addressing the merits. The merits of the claim that "I don't see it, so it doesn't happen," which is the actual issue on the table.
If you're going to cite "plausibility" as your sole piece of evidence, then pointing out that plausibility isn't evidence is addressing the issue.
You're playing a debate game, not engaging on the content of the issue.
I don't know what part of this DMN denies or doubts, but aside from the general question about changing patterns in supervised play, there is the specific question of kids play of baseball in unsupervised settings. Are you saying you've read research to show that this is down among American children?
Nor have you presented the slightest bit of support for the claim that baseball is somehow uniquely immune, distinct from the broader underlying cultural reality.
Seriously, vague generalities don't become specific evidence, no matter how vocal you are about it. There are many real, substantial changes in many aspects of society. I wouldn't deny that, and haven't done so. But one can't prove that kids play less unsupervised baseball by hand-waving with phrases like "family dynamics."
BS. Your entire argument on this subject is just this sort of BS.
Of course I can't "prove" anything. This isn't an issue of "proof." It's an issue of basic logic, observation, deduction, common sense, and general knowledge.
Because I say something is so, doesn't mean it is. But because you say it isn't, doesn't mean it isn't. In the balance is the preponderance of evidence, which you pretend doesn't exist, but does, whether you're genuinely ignorant about it, or just pretending to be so for the sake of argument.
anyone here got any numbers on the % of HS - not prep schools - who have a baseball team?
ok, lets forget that for a second
anyone who got some kind of search function want to see stuff like
1 - of all the HS guys who are drafted, where are their HS, are any of them either urban or rural?
2 - of all the guys who get college scholarships, how many guys get them who came from rural or urban HS
3 - of all the guys who are drafted out of hs, how many of them are from either single parent homes OR live in a family, any race, at or near the poverty line?
maybe this will tell us a little something.
- and by the way, i am REAL surprised there are kidz - under 12 kidz - out there playing by their own self without no adult.
i don't know any mother who would send her kid alone to the playground. at least not here in urban houston. and i have done some babysitting for rich white women and took there kidz to the playground and i did not see one single kid there without no parent/adult.
things might could be different Up There where all yall live but we WERE talking about why there are not many american born black men playing baseball today
As for your question, it's a strawman. If you had shown your theory to be true about football, basketball, hockey, X, Y, Z, Q, and W, all of which play roles similar to baseball, and then said, "Why would baseball be unique?", then you'd have a valid point. But you haven't actually shown your theory to be true about <u>anything</u> specific at all. So I haven't argued that baseball was "unique" at all. Maybe baseball is just like all those other things.
My entire argument on this subject has been "I'll believe it when I see evidence to support it beyond misty-eyed anecdotes about people's childhoods." To quote Patrick Henry's views on sandlot baseball, "If this be BS, then make the most of it."Wait. A minute ago there was mounds of published research on the subject. Now there's no proof at all; it's just a bunch of anecdotes?
* Basic logic, deduction, and 'common sense' all require that one have evidence to which to apply the logic, deduction, and common sense. No such evidence has been supplied.
* "Observation" isn't a useful citation because the entire question is over the validity of the observations in question.
* "General knowledge" doesn't mean anything at all. Averaging lots of people's opinions doesn't create facts. (Reminds me of Richard Feynman's story about the emperor's nose.)
If you want me to believe that you see fewer kids playing baseball today than you did growing up, I'll provisionally accept that statement. (Only provisionally, because as I noted, decades-old memories -- particularly of our childhoods -- are not that reliable.) But if you want me to believe that your current observations are representative -- that is, that the fact that you see fewer kids actually means that there are fewer kids -- well, why should I?
Well, you said to forget it, and then you brought it up! ;-)
I would be surprised to find that today, too. I sure don't see it in my own realm of observation, and read or hear nothing to suggest that it's going on someplace else.
i don't know any mother who would send her kid alone to the playground. at least not here in urban houston. and i have done some babysitting for rich white women and took there kidz to the playground and i did not see one single kid there without no parent/adult.
Here in Santa Clara, I almost never see under 12 kids without parents/adults around, either, playing pickup baseball, riding their bikes, doing newspaper routes, flying kites, going swimming, setting off firecrackers, climbing trees, getting into fights, hanging around the shopping center, riding the bus, going to the movies, going to the record store, eating at the ice cream shop and the burger joint, and so on. And this represents a very, very different social landscape than that which was the reality here 30-40 years ago, dramatically, starkly, vividly so, because when I was that age, I and hordes of other kids did all that kind of stuff, routinely, without adult supervision. It was a social norm that clearly, sharply no longer abides.
Because it's basically, simply sensible, and consistent with mounds of broader information on the subject which you are apparently blissfully ignorant about.
If you care to inform yourself on the issue, you will. If you want to believe that what you've read in this single thread is the sum total of information on the issue, then you'll apparently continue to persist in willful insularity.
Same here John.
my mama she told me the same thing and she's like around 10 years oldern you. but i will be 27 in a couple weeks and i disremember ever being anywhere doing anything without adults watching my azz until i was way over 12.
i wonder when things changed.
So far, all you've done is come up with wordier ways of saying, "I think it sounds good, and lots of people repeat it, so it must be true."
i wonder when things changed.
My kids are almost your age, and I must admit, whether this is an example of great or terrible parenting on my and my wife's part, they never did diddly without adult supervision either.
I don't know exactly when things changed. But I do know that when I was a young parent, in the early-to-mid-1980s, the TV-and-tabloid-fueled pop culture was rife with horror stories of child abductions, molestations, and murders. Whether the actual incidence of such horrors was any higher then than in prior eras was never made clear, but certainly the prevailing wisdom among parents was that it would be sheer negligence to let one's child be unsupervised away from the house for more than a few minutes.
I would like to say that my wife and I laughed fear-mongering paranoia off, but the truth is we were amid the culture too, and we didn't do anything significant to resist it. And the fact is that there is a pretty clear tipping point here: once a meaningful minority of parents refuses to allow their kids to play free in the neighborhood, the opportunity for the other kids to have playmates significantly dries up, and the situation becomes a fait accompli.
Wait all you like. I'm not going to hold you hand. Look for yourself, if you're actually interested in the issue, as opposed to simply taking a contrarian debate-point stand in an internet thread.
Also, there were razor blades in candy at Halloween. And LSD stickers.
Also, there were razor blades in candy at Halloween. And LSD stickers.
Nor does equating urban legends with Fox-News-style-paranoia with legitimate research on mainstream generational cultural shifts in parenting practices amount to a persuasive argument, either.
That's a weird way to conduct a thoroughly fact- and proof-based argument, I think.
i can not even start to think of telling my kidz ok go outside to the playground be back for dinner and i got NO idea where they are, what they doing. you leave them to do that next thing you know its drugs and gangs.
yeah the kidz 3 and 4 right now but you best believe it ain't happening any time when they are under 12 neither. you leave kidz by there own self next thing you know they in trouble. and i got boys and boys a lot more trouble then grrls because boys got no common sense genes on there dna.
(you disbelieve me i ask you - and when is the last time you see females at a sporting event starting fights? throwing trash on the field? jumping into the net at yankee stadium? running onto the field and trying to punch out laz diaz? ok so that is old kidz. your grrrlz do dumbass shtt like going up on the roof with an umbrella and jumping off so as they can drift down like mary poppins? i rest my case. grrrrrrrrrr. it's all the lawyers around here got me talking like them.)
and we got a backyard with a real high wall and so they can't get out of the back yard and you best believe i keep an eye on them out there
and i got a REAL hard time believing you send your grrrls (say your 3 oldest grrls) off to the park and you and your wife stay home and do something else. you wouldn't worry at ALL?
You keep talking about "legitimate research," but then keep forgetting to cite any.
No, I don't. I'm not forgetting anything. I've said several times that I'm not going to cite anything, that it's out there for you to read if you're genuinely interested in the topic.
Not to mention the hysteria of the War On Drugs. 'Your child could be friends with... A PUSHER.'
So you have all these fears metasizing in the parental brainlobe, this in a society where one-parent and two-working parent households are becoming the norm. Lo and behold, its at this point when such wonderful inventions as cable TV, the VCR, and the video game console hit the market. Who needs to watch over every single minute of their kids' outdoor life when you can stick 'em in front of the one-eyed babysitter.
Voila. Kids stay home, nobody plays pick-up games, and the only way they get a bat and ball is if they have a supervising adult on-duty. (And heaven forbid you wind up with Coach Chester The Molester.) Now, thanks to the Wii, I wouldn't be surprised if even organized leagues might be hitting the endangered list in the near future.
No, seriously. If kids were playing unorganized baseball regularly here in my town, I'd see it. Because, yes, DMN, I do hang out at playgrounds for no apparent reason frequently enough to cause the parents here to be concerned. Sheesh. What a poopy head you are. But I like you. Anyone who has the stones to imply that citizens who cast there eyes towards area where kids have traditionally played baseball are suspect in re: perverted tendencies has my admiration.
possible sources of blame:
Video Games! American Idol! Sedentary lifestyle! McDonald's!
Aside from that question about your memory, there are the questions DMN is posing (and that none are meeting with more than anecdotes) about how much kids play unsupervised today. I'm opposing your anecdotes with my own: I see plenty of unsupervised play going on where I live.
Finally, Steve, I asked if you had read anything on the drop in kids playing baseball specifically, and you ignored or missed the question. Have you?
FOOL!!! We played variations of baseball, given that there were usually only 6 to 8 of us. But we played home run derby, we played wiffle ball, we played pitcher, ss CF and LF (anything right of 2B was foul), we played stickball. Me, Michael C, his brother Jeffrey, Barry M, sometimes Bobby K, sometimes Mark S, sometimes another Mark S, sometimes, the O'Connell brothers (when we could separate them from their priests...), sometimes Mark G, sometimes Mark W, sometimes Robert C... We played every day it didn't rain from mid April to late September.
My monkeys say they will happily take that wager. However, in that they do not receive money as wages, per se, if you would be willing to accept, say, bananas or raisins instead of cash in the unlikely event that you win the bet, you're on. Define "huge spate of articles" for my main monkey. He's a stickler for detail.
You have a monkey hierarchy?
By the way, I'm not trying to suggest anything about the issue at hand - African-American participation in baseball. I'm trying to suggest that bored columnists on deadline consume the same media as the rest of us and with the approach of Jackie Robinson day, this is an easy column to write.
Sure it does! You need two people to play catch, three if you want to pitch/hit/field or play "stolen base." Four is a full game, with invisible runners. You need one bat and one less glove than there are kids. True, kids don't work on the bunt-rotation defense or hitting the cutoff man in such circs, but they become terrific fielders of bad-hop grounders, and the BP is continuous. You can practice double-play pivots with just three kids, if my decades-old memory serves :)
I see plenty of unsupervised play going on where I live
I do too (Arlington, Texas). It's mostly skateboarders, though. I think there's a mix of factors: there are extrinsic reasons why there's not a lot of sandlot baseball anymore, and then there's the intrinsic one that a lot of kids somehow prefer to be doing other things. The intrinsic one is a lot harder to figure.
What kind of question is that? Of course I do. All monkeys are not created equal.
Not going to blame soccer?
Don't forget "500". 1 batter tossing it up and hitting to 1 or more fielders. Catch the ball on the fly and get 100 points. 1 bounce, 75, 2, 50, 3 or more, 25. First fielder to 500 points gets to hit. We'd play that until past sunset, when the sky was still light enough to make out a (semi) white ball in the air.
FWIW, my 7.5 yo son and a few other neighborhood kids to occasionally play some version of pickup ball, though it usually requires an adult to pitch to them. Hopefully, in a few years they won't require that and will be fully self starting. But then I live in a quasi-suburban area where the weather is condusive to ball playing 365 days a year.
Of course I have. I've not only read articles on the subject, I've heard them presented in forums, and engaged in multidisciplinary discussions on the subject.
Anyone who says that there is nothing documented on this issue simply hasn't looked at all. Among the many who've done lots of research in the area is a friend of mine, Dave Ogden in the Department of Communication at the University of Nebraska.
There is lots of stuff out there, if only one cares to take the smallest initiative to seek it.
Damn straight.
I'll quote myself, from my article "The Broncos of Buckshaw" (Nine, Spring 2003, Vol. 11, No. 2):
We played that, too. We either called it "500" or "workups."
The problem with that game was that it rewarded knocking your competitor over and hogging the ball, so the littler kids rarely found it satisfactory.
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